Dark Places

Libby DayNOW

Lyle had left nine messages in the days I’d gone Oklahoma-incommunicado, their tone wildly varying: He’d started with some sort of impression of an anxious dowager, I think, talking through a pinched nose, inquiring about my welfare, some comedy bit, then he’d moved on to annoyed, stern, urgent and panicked, before swinging back to goofy on the last message. “If you don’t call me back, I’m coming … and hell’s coming with me!” he screamed, then added: “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Tombstone.”

I have, but it was a bad Kurt Russell.

I phoned him, gave him my address (an unusual choice for me) told him he could come over if he wanted. In the background I could hear a woman’s voice asking who it was, telling Lyle to ask me something—-just ask her, don’t be silly, justaskher—and Lyle trying to scramble off the phone. Maybe Magda, wanting a report on Runner? I’d give it. I wanted to talk, in fact, or I would get in bed and not get out for another ten years.

While I waited, I prepped my hair. I’d bought a dye kit at the grocery store on the way home from seeing Ben. I had planned on grabbing my usual blonde—Platinum Pizazz—but in the end I left with Scarlet Sass, a redhead smiling saucily at me on the box. Less upkeep, yes, I always preferred less upkeep. And I’d been thinking about changing back since Ben remarked how much I looked like my mother, the idea irresistible to me, me somehow thinking I’d show up outside Diane’s trailer, looking like Patty Day resurrected, and maybe that would be enough to get me inside. Goddam Diane, not phoning me back.

I packed a crimson glob of chemicals on my head, the smell like something gently burning. Fourteen minutes more to go when the doorbell rang. Lyle. Of course he was early. He rushed in, talking about how relieved he was to hear from me, then pulled back.

“What is that, a perm?”

“I’m going back to red.”

“Oh. Good. I mean, it’s nice. The natural.”

In the thirteen minutes I had left, I told Lyle about Runner, and about Diondra.

“OK,” Lyle said, looking to his left, aiming his ear at me, his listening-thinking stance. “So according to Ben, Ben had gone back home, that night, briefly, got in a fight with your mom, and then left again, and he knows nothing after that.”

“According to Ben.” I nodded.

“And according to Runner, what? Either Trey killed your family because Runner owed him, or Ben and Trey killed your family and Diondra in some sort of Devil worship ritual. What’d Runner say about his girlfriend recanting his alibi?”

“He said she could suck his dick. I gotta rinse.”

He trailed me to the bathroom, filling the doorway, hands on each side of the frame, thinking.

“Can I say something specific about that night, Libby?”

I was bent over the tub, water dribbling out of the attachable nozzle—no showers in Over There That Way—but I paused.

“I mean, doesn’t it seem like it could have been two people? Somehow? Michelle’s murder was just—Your mom and Debby were like, uh, hunted down almost. But Michelle dies in her bed, covers pulled up. They have different feels to them. I think.”

I gave a small, stiff shrug, the Darkplace images swirling, and stuck my head under the spray, where I couldn’t hear anymore. The water started running toward the drain, burgundy. While I was still upside down, I could feel Lyle grab the attachment from me and pat at the back of my head. Clumsy, unromantic, just getting the job done.

“You still had some guck,” he yelled over the water, then handed the hose back to me. I rose up, and he reached toward me, grabbed an earlobe and swiped. “Some red stuff on your earlobe too. That probably wouldn’t go with earrings.”

“My ears aren’t pierced,” I said, combing out my hair, trying to figure out if the color was right. Trying very hard not to think about my family’s corpses, to concentrate just on hair.

“Really? I thought every girl had pierced ears.”

“Never had anyone to do them for me.”

He watched me brush, a sad-sack smile on his face.

“How’s the hair?” he asked.

“We’ll find out when it dries.”

We sat back down on the soggy living-room couch, each of us at opposite ends, listening to the rain get going again.

“Trey Teepano had an alibi,” he finally said.

“Well, Runner had an alibi too. Apparently they’re easy to come by.”

“Maybe you should go ahead and officially recant your testimony?”

“I’m not recanting anything until I’m sure,” I said. “I’m just not.”

The rain got harder, made me crave a fireplace.

“You know that the farm went into foreclosure the day of the murders, right?” Lyle said.

I nodded. It was one of forty-thousand new facts I had in my brain, thanks to Lyle and all his files.

“Doesn’t that seem like something?” he said. “Doesn’t this all seem too weird, like we’re missing something obvious? A girl tells a lie, a farm goes under, a gambler’s bets are called in by a, jeez, by a Devil-worshiping bookie. All on the same day.”

“And every single person in this case lies, is lying, did lie.”

“What should we do now?” he asked.

“Watch some TV,” I said. I flipped on the TV, plomped back down, pulling out a strand of half-dry hair to check the color. It looked pure shocking red, but then, that was the color of my hair.

“You know, Libby, I’m proud of you, with all this,” Lyle said stiffly.

“Ah don’t say that, it sounds so fucking patronizing, it drives me crazy when you do that.”

“I wasn’t being patronizing,” he said, his voice going high.

“Just crazy.”

“I wasn’t. I mean, it’s cool to get to know you.”

“Yeah what a thrill. I’m so worthwhile.”

“You are.”

“Lyle, just don’t, OK?” I folded a knee up under my chin and we both sat pretending to watch a cooking show, the host’s voice too bright.

“Libby?”

I rolled my eyes over at him slowly, as if it pained me.

“Can I tell you something?”

“What.”

“You ever hear about those wildfires near San Bernardino, back in 1999, they destroyed, like eighty homes and about ninety thousand acres?”

I shrugged. Seemed like California was always on fire.

“I was the kid who set that fire. Not on purpose. Or at least, I didn’t mean for it to get out of control.”

“What?”

“I was only a kid, twelve years old, and I wasn’t a firebug or anything, but I’d ended up with a lighter, a cigarette lighter, I can’t even remember why I had it, but I liked flicking it, you know, and I was hiking back in the hills behind my development, bored, and the trail was just, covered, with old grasses and stuff. And I was walking along, flicking the lighter, just seeing if I could get the tops of the weeds to catch, they had these fuzzy tips—

“Foxtail.”

“And I turned around, and … and they’d all caught on fire. There were about twenty mini-fires behind me, like torches. And it was during the Santa Anas, so the tops started blowing away, and they’d land and catch another patch on fire, and then blow another hundred feet. And then it wasn’t just small fires here and there. It was a big fire.”

“That fast?”

“Yeah, in just those seconds, it was a fire. I still remember that feeling, like maybe for one moment I might have been able to undo it, but no. Now it was, like, it was all beyond me. And, and it was going to be bad. I just remember thinking I was in the middle of something that I’d never get over. And I haven’t. It’s hard to be that young and realize something like that.”

I was supposed to say something now.

“You didn’t mean for it to happen, Lyle. You were a kid with some horrible, weird luck.”

“Well, I know, but that’s why I, you know, identify with you. Not so long ago, I started learning about your story and I thought, She might be like me. She might know that feeling, of something getting completely beyond your control. You know, with your testimony, and what happened after—”

“I know.”

“I’ve never told anyone that story. I mean, voluntarily. I just figured you—”

“I know. Thanks.”

If I were a better person, I’d have put my hand on Lyle’s then, given him a warm squeeze, let him know I understood, I empathized. But I wasn’t, the thanks was hard enough. Buck hopped up on the sofa between us, willing me to feed him.

“So, uh, what are you doing this weekend?” Lyle said, picking at the edge of the sofa, the same spot where Krissi had put her face in her hands and wept.

“Nothing.”

“Uh, so my mom wanted me to see if you wanted to come to this birthday party she’s having for me,” he said. “Just, like dinner or something, just friends.”

People had birthday parties, grown-ups did, but the way Lyle said it made me think of clowns and balloons and maybe a pony ride.

“Oh, you probably want to just enjoy that time with your friends,” I said, looking around the room for the remote control.

“Right. That’s why I invited you.”

“Oh. OK then.”

I was trying not to smile, that would be too awful, and I was trying to figure out what to say, ask him how old he’d be—twelve years old in 1999 means, good God, twenty-two?—but a news bulletin blared in. Lisette Stephens was found murdered this morning, her body at the bottom of a ravine. She’d been dead for months.